A nominalistic proof of the conservativeness of set theory (Q1187976)

When we apply mathematics to the physical world, we assume that the mathematics being applied is conservative: that is, that it is consistent with every internally consistent purely physical theory. (The mathematics being applied is impure: it includes set theory with non-mathematical urelements, and allows physical vocabulary in the comprehension schemas. Because of this, conservativeness is stronger than consistency.) In \textit{Science without numbers} (1980; Zbl 0454.00015) I formulated this notion of conservativeness in a platonistic fashion, and proved set- theoretically that mathematics is conservative. In later work I have shown how to reformulate the notion of conservativeness in a certain ``nominalistic'' fashion --- that is, in a fashion that does not involve quantification over mathematical entities. But having reformulated conservativeness nominalistically, can we prove it nominalistically? In this note I show that the answer is `yes'.